Sunday, April 30, 2017

Harkin back during the late Home Meal Replacement frenzy when grocery
stores, C-stores, and restaurants all studied with excitement the successful
developments fabulous sales at Phil Romano's Eatzi's. Growing
once again Eatzi's is where Phil
turned the page from restaurateur too foodservice retailer, food merchant extraordinaire.Phil's experiment was a smashing success. It
was and remains consumer interactive, participatory with visceral authenticity recording
sales of 17 Million a year at the original store. Now in NYC Eatlaly is Eatzi's on steroids doing close to
60 Million a year in sales.

The legacy Home Meal
Replacement focus quickly faded away in the Restaurant side of business.
However in the Grocery, C-store, and Drug Store sector it continued to be
studied, tested, and implemented. Today the grocerant niche is the strategic
path of choice for non-traditional food retailers, targeted at restaurant
customers, it is profitable, and expanding at an ever increasing pace.

Grocerant Meal Components Drive Retail Customer Adoption

Wawa was once considered a
convenience store.Today Wawa positions
it's brand as Fresh First, Built-ToOrder and Ready-To-Go with
focus of serving Fast Casual Food- - To Go. At Wawa
customers are now finding What's for Breakfast, What's
for Lunch and now what's for Dinner. Wawa excels at offering consumer
meal components that can be bundled into the perfect family mix
and match family meal according to our own Grocerant Guru®.

Sheetz once a convenience store as
well now calls themselves a restaurant that sells gas. Sheetz Made To
Order food is a hit with customers. Sheetz is successful
contemporizing legacy C-store products with differentiation, customization, and
personalization. Consumer like Sheetz variety including a 24 hour menu serving all
day parts - all day long with a wide range of consumer meal and
snacking needs. Sounds and acts like a restaurant doing all the right things.

Rutter's Farm Stores is another
convenience store in transition. Rutter's understands
the unique balance between palate, price, pleasure, and the
consumer's drive for qualitative distinctive differentiated new messaging and
Rutter's is meeting that need set.

The food value proposition
equilibrium for the consumer today balances; better for you, flavor, and traditional productsall
blended into something with a twist. In industry speak, differentiated does not
mean different to the consumer it means familiar. Rutter's is an example of
brand identity extending beyond consumer expectations within the traditional
conveniences store sector. Too the consumer Rutter's is a direct valued
competitor within the QSR space.

Grocerants Today Drive Incremental Experimentation

Foodservice Solutions® identified, quantified, qualified, and coined the term Grocerant
back in 1996 and was the first to have the term published in NRN and
Foodservice Director in 1996. The grocerant niche is a result of the blurring
of the line between restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, and drug
stores all selling fresh prepared, portable convenient meal solutions.
Targeted at the time-starved consumer with Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh
prepared food components that are "better for you", portable and
portioned for one or two. All of these operators want a larger share of the
retail food market. They want to take share from the restaurants.

Whole Foods is no longer Whole Paycheck. Whole Foods 365 can be fresh food fast but
they lost a bit of their focus in development yet it is still deemed "better
for you" by consumers. They are driving customer frequency while building
loyalty with Fresh prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat better for you food.
Whole Foods focus is on convenient meal participation, better for you
differentiation, and individualization.

Is Walgreens Duane Reade the next Big Competitor in the retail fresh
food space? Walgreens Fresh with Duane Reade has over 8,175 retail outlets. Who
is selling what in your back yard? With Walgreens entering the fresh food area
again with meats, wraps, soups "and other on-the-go grab-N—go meal component
options, as well as convenient alternatives for tonight's family meal,
it is clear that the future of fresh food retail leadership may be up in the
air.

Bartell Drugs and Rite Aid
are both offering more and more fresh prepared food options for consumers. From
coast to coast increasing the drug store sector is adding fresh food options in
the form of meal component options faster than any other sector except many the
Dollar
Store sector.

Food Retailers Stepping Up

Food Retailing never takes a step
backward according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven
Johnson. Consumers are dynamic not
static always looking to save both time and money. The grocerant niche is
propelling new quality points of fresh food distribution and competitors that
are well financed. Remember, when it is 4pm,
do you know what your customers want to make for dinner ?

Steven Johnson is the Grocerant
Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®, with extensive experience as
a multi-unit operator, consultant and brand/product positioning. Since 1991
Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the
Grocerant niche for more on Steven Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® visit The Grocerant
on LinkedIn or @Grocerant on Twitter

Saturday, April 29, 2017

I
don’t believe that anyone who reads this blog on a regular basics thinks
running a chain of restaurants today is easy.
Simply executing operational excellence by serving hot food hot and cold
food cold at times is more work than many of us ever signed up for.

Restaurants
and all retailers today must not only do the operational basics well they have
to figure out how to integrate technology into an existing system so as to
edify the system and elevate the customer experience simultaneously.

With
incremental success comes the unintended consequence of that success. In the case of Starbucks the fact is
technology mobile ordering has created incremental congestion in the stores.
(OK, so you wish you had that problem) Now Starbucks is developing new
strategies to help combat congestion at stores caused by its mobile order-ahead
service.

The
company, which met expectations for its quarterly
earnings report this
week, provided an update about the issues around Mobile Order & Pay (MOP),
a program that lets customers order with their smartphone via Starbucks’ app
and skip the line.

The
problem, as Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz detailed
on the company’s earnings call in January, is that the
increasing number of MOP orders creates congestion inside
stores for mobile order-ahead customers trying to pick up their
coffee and food at hand-off stations. This not only affects customers
who are picking up items, but also potential customers who may notice the
in-store traffic and end up not purchasing anything.

Starbucks
CEO Kevin Johnson, stated “Starbucks is implementing “three waves” of
improvements to reduce in-store congestion caused by MOP. The first, which he
said is largely completed, includes additional training and reallocation
of employee roles, as well additional labor at peak hours in select stores.
Johnson said this has resulted in higher customer service feedback and
increased peak transactions.

The
second wave, Johnson said, is related to a new “Digital Order Manager,” or
DOM, a tablet-based device that gives baristas at the company’s busiest stores
visibility on all incoming MOP orders, as well as those coming from drive-thru
and the cafe. “It enables better tracking and real-time order production
management,” Johnson noted.

Finally,
the third wave is about how Starbucks is designing new stores and renovating
existing ones with a focus on store layout that provides ways to increase
throughput. Starbucks is driving customer relevance with technology. Technology can drive customer adoption and
incremental customer relevance. Do you
have to many customers?

Friday, April 28, 2017

Online ordering at Au Bon Pain is
nothing new as regular readers of
this blog know.Au Bon Pain catering sales too Boston area
insurance companies and law firms alone for over the last 18 years has exceed $
6,000,000.00 per year according to our own Grocerant Guru®.

Au
Bon is set to utilize technology to put the ‘fast’ in fast-casual, Au Bon Pain
announced the launch of ABP Pickup which is a new service for customers to save
time and skip the line.

ABP
Pickup is available via the new Au Bon Pain mobile app and at aubonpain.com, ‘ABP
Pickup allows guests to place their order when they have a few free minutes,
select a convenient pick-up time at their preferred Au Bon Pain location, pay
ahead, and skip the line when they pick up in café. Once registered, customers
can save their orders, easily choosing favorites when it is most convenient,
making it perfect for skipping the line during the morning coffee rush hour or
grabbing lunch on-the-go between meetings.”

Ray
Blanchette, president and CEO, Au Bon Pain stated “With ABP Pickup, guests will
have more time to get on with the busy day ahead with a full and happy stomach”….
“We put our time into creating quality, delicious food, but want to give our
guests an efficient dining experience. We are proud to introduce this new
service to better help our customers, no matter what their schedules may look
like.”

ABP
Pickup is currently being rolled out in Massachusetts locations and will
continue to become available across Au Bon Pain regions between now and May 25,
2017. ABP Pickup is available with the Au Bon Pain mobile app available on the
App Store and Google Play.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in
outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify
additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and
brand and menu integration strategy. Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche
visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or twitter.com/grocerant

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Why is it that so many chain
restaurant brand managers continue to tout the value of their brand promise and
when you read their brand promise it is the same brand promise that they had 5
years ago, 10 years ago and in some cases 15 years ago?Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®
Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson believes that
the consumer is dynamic not static and when the customer moves retailers must
move with them.

Regular readers of this blog know that
restaurants have’ become fully woven’ into the fabric of our daily lives and
retailers want their brands increase in value with the consumer over time as
well.Restaurant brand
protectionism is dead
according to the team at www.FoodserviceSolutions.us.

Restaurants need to speed up
innovation, because what’s innovative now will be an expectation not too far
down the line. Even Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America
recently when speaking about the restaurant sector stated “You’re not going
fast enough… In what area will restaurants need to hit the gas next? The
customer experience, Ryan predicts. The challenge, he said, will be finding
ways to surprise and delight when diners today have so many options.”

Gail
Seanor, senior director of marketing technology for TGI
Fridaysunderstands that customer relevant data
points can help retailers keep up with consumers.Restaurants must evolve with innovative
insights utilizing outside customer focused data points at times to find where
undercurrents of customer migration are pointing too.In shot retailers need to find a way to tease
what Seanor calls the “next best option,” not what they’ve already purchased.

Seanor
has a great example: “If someone buys a sleeping bag, they shouldn’t be shown
more ads on sleeping bags, but instead should be shown a tent. Right now, even
the more advanced brands are still trying to resell the sleeping bag.

Steven
Johnson the Grocerant Guru® at Foodservice
Solutions® repeatedly pontificates that consumers don’t think in silo’s when
they think about dinner, lunch, or breakfast.In fact consumers today buy meal components from multiple channels for
one meal.NPD found that 40% of
consumers now buy grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared
meals from grocery stores.

Ready-2-Eat
fresh prepared food was once the mainstay of the chain restaurant business and
it still is.However other retailers
have found a way to garner that business and increasingly finding a better way
to fill the customer need set of a fresh fast meal than many restaurants
have.Thus customers are migrating to
new and evolving avenues of distribution.Are you still trying to resell that sleeping bag?